Purple Hibiscus

in front of the TV in the living room. They didn’t want to go to the stadium because they would have to return the game soon.
    Amaka laughed when Father Amadi asked her to come. “Don’t try to be nice, Father, you know you would rather be alone with your sweetheart,” she said. And Father Amadi smiled and said nothing.
    I went alone with him. My mouth felt tight from embarrassment as he drove us to the stadium. I was grateful that he did not say anything about Amaka’s statement, that he talked about the sweet-smelling rains instead and sang along with the robust Igbo choruses coming from his cassette player. The boys from Ugwu Agidi were already there when we got to the stadium. They were taller, older versions of the boys I hadseen the last time; their hole-ridden shorts were just as worn and their faded shirts just as threadbare. Father Amadi raised his voice—it lost most of its music when he did—as he gave encouragement and pointed out the boys’ weaknesses. When they were not looking, he took the rod up a notch, then yelled, “One more time: set, go!” and they jumped over it, one after the other. He raised it a few more times before the boys caught on and said, “
Ah! Ah! Fada
!” He laughed and said he believed they could jump higher than they thought they could. And that they had just proved him right.
    It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn’t.
    “What clouds your face?” Father Amadi asked, sitting down beside me. His shoulder touched mine. The new smell of sweat and old smell of cologne filled my nostrils.
    “Nothing.”
    “Tell me about the nothing, then.”
    “You believe in those boys,” I blurted out.
    “Yes,” he said, watching me. “And they don’t need me to believe in them as much as I need it for myself.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I need to believe in something that I never question.” He picked up the water bottle, drank deeply from it. I watched the ripples in his throat as the water went down. I wished I were the water, going into him, to be with him, onewith him. I had never envied water so much before. His eyes caught mine, and I looked away, wondering if he had seen the longing in my eyes.
    “Your hair needs to be plaited,” he said.
    “My hair?”
    “Yes. I will take you to the woman who plaits your aunt’s hair in the market.”
    He reached out then and touched my hair. Mama had plaited it in the hospital, but because of my raging headaches, she did not make the braids tight. They were starting to slip out of the twists, and Father Amadi ran his hand over the loosening braids, in gentle, smoothing motions. He was looking right into my eyes. He was too close. His touch was so light I wanted to push my head toward him, to feel the pressure of his hand. I wanted to collapse against him. I wanted to press his hand to my head, my belly, so he could feel the warmth that coursed through me.
    He let go of my hair, and I watched him get up and run back to the boys on the field.
    IT WAS TOO EARLY when Amaka’s movements woke me up the next morning; the room was not yet touched by the lavender rays of dawn. In the faint glow from the security lights outside, I saw her tying her wrapper round her chest. Something was wrong; she did not tie her wrapper just to go to the toilet.
    “Amaka,
o gini
?”
    “Listen,” she said.
    I could make out Aunty Ifeoma’s voice from the verandah, and I wondered what she was doing up so early. Then I heardthe singing. It was the measured singing of a large group of people, and it came in through the window.
    “Students are rioting,” Amaka said.
    I got up and followed her into the living room. What did it mean, that students were rioting? Were we in danger? Jaja and Obiora were on the verandah with Aunty Ifeoma. The cool air felt heavy against my bare arms, as if it were holding on to raindrops that were reluctant to fall.
    “Turn off the security lights,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “If they pass and see the light, they might throw stones up here.”
    Amaka turned off the lights. The singing was clearer now, loud and resonant. There had to be a least five hundred people. “Sole administrator must